Family Photo Album

Another resource that I keep close beside my computer is a photo book edited by William E. Farr and with a foreword by James Welch. “The Reservation Blackfeet, 1882-1945: A Photographic History of Cultural Survival.” (U. of Washington Press, @1984 is held by Browning Public School District #9.) Besides writing the excellent text, Farr often makes available the images to other scholars. He is a history professor at the University of Montana in Missoula.

In the most humble old log cabin on the reservation, people could always pull open a drawer or trunk and show you wonderful photos The earliest in this collection are by Walter McClintock. Photos of their own world evoked two contradictory impulses in people: to clutch them close, wrapped in memories, and hide them to keep them safe -- or to show them to everyone with pride, evidence of the family lookin’ good. I especially treasure the photos of marriage partners, sometimes seemingly a mismatch, others so young you worry for them.

Farr and Gary Schmautz, a history teacher at Browning High School, were probably the only people who could have done this because any local Blackft would have aroused suspicion and jealousy on the part of rivals. These white men were outsiders. By the time Farr and Schmautz had examined these photos over and over, discussed them with owners, organized patterns, reflected, and reconsidered, they were no longer outsiders.

My father-in-law’s mercantile store (1904) is on page 41. Many of the old people in Adolf Hungry Wolf’s stories are here. I’m especially fond of a portrait of Malenda Wren, resplendent in an elegant sequin Victorian yoke. With her hair up and small drop earrings, she could pass for an Italian or Spanish beauty. On the page across from her is Tom Dawson, raised and educated in Scotland because of his white trader father, Tom made a beeline back home as soon as he could. He’s shown with a big old billy mountain goat, worthy of the Great Northern railroad symbol.

Every photo has a story, but one that always absorbs me is on page 60. It’s the school J.H. Sherburne started in his upstairs for the town kids. The teacher is Sherburne’s nephew. The two white boys are the children of Thad Scriver’s partner at the Browning Mercantile. By chance, someone ran across the teacher’s report on this 1913-14 class that the nephew sent to the Denver central BIA office and sent it to me. He had listed each child and indicated what their weak and strong points were. The girls came off pretty well, but you can imagine the boys. We all knew these same people as middle-aged adults When I showed the comments (the usual things, like “so-and-so must learn to govern his temper,” or “so-and-so is very lazy” or maybe “cooperative” or maybe “quick to learn”) to friends, they would say, “Oh, that’s just what he was like his whole life!” But sometimes it would be their grandpa and they didn’t like the comments. In the Sixties there was a fire in that classroom and I helped carry out the desks and maps to the Scriver lawn next door. It had been untouched all those years.

On page 130 is a posed photo of “Moonlight School at Browning” where “citizens” were taught to read. Everyone is sitting up straight and holding an open book. Two-Guns Whitecalf is front and center -- he is NOT looking at his book! They are in the new building -- more about it later -- that is one of the oldest now. The teachers stand along the walls. These are not Curtis photos of people wearing borrowed finery, but rather people who a little earlier had stamped snow or mud off their boots so they could come in.

One of the overarching convictions, “tropes” or metaphors has been “The Vanishing Indian.” Brian Dippie wrote the definitive book. (“The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy” by Brian W. Dippie, University Press of Kansas. @1982. ISBN 0-7006-0507-X) At first the idea was that Native Americans were vanishing and soon there would be no “old-time Indians” left. Much of the interest in them was heartbreak over their presumed “doom.” People will say with great authority, even around here, “Well, all the old full-bloods are gone now.” But they aren’t gone. They are just a little different, not that much.

Indians put on Frodo’s “disappearing” cloak in order to stay safe. They slip among us all the time, ghosting in and out of our very bodies. If everyone who has Indian blood stood up at once, few of us would still be seated. Winston Churchill was part-Indian through his American mother. Heather Locklear is Indian. Someone should write a book about “The Reappearing Indian.”

The people in this book are the people mentioned by Grinnell, Schultz, Wissler, Hungry Wolf, the people who posed for Charlie Russell. See for yourself the slaughterhouse, the boarding school, the encampments, the log houses, On page 121 is Louis Plenty Treaty, whom Hungry Wolf calls Bear Child -- he’s “outstanding in his field.” On page 134 is the W.P.A. sewing club from Two Medicine, seven young women who were powerful all their lives, like the seven sisters in the Big Dipper. Mae Williamson, second from the left, was the first woman on the Tribal Council. On page 133 is the Heart Butte painting club, three guys who appear to be taking scenery as their subject. Tom Dog Gun, Aloysius Evans and Sam Calf Robe. Where are their paintings? Maybe out in the old bunkhouse? Maybe sold to a tourist? The photos raise about as many questions as they answer.

We’ve moved on to recording the moment with video now (no mercy for politicians) but also we’ve learned how to falsify images so that people are erased or added. We can make it look as though a couple of cowboys are herding a hundred cats. But these photos are from an innocent time before World War II. Maybe someone went in and put on their ceremonial dress, but that was about it. And it’s plenty.